Amy Beager : Slow Blink

31 May - 6 July

Amy Beager
Slow Blink
Slow Blink

In a series of vividly coloured, otherworldly spaces we encounter a woman and her cat, the boundaries between their bodies blurred to evoke states of transformation and interconnectedness. Slow Blink, Amy Beager’s latest solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, was made in a period of grief, following the loss of her cat Ashitaka. Drawing on personal memories and fluctuating emotions, these tender paintings trace their relationship and Beager’s experience of mourning while also exploring our wider connection to nature and the spiritual realm.

While Beager’s compositions often refer to motifs from art history or specific mythological narratives, the colours, lines and textures develop through the painting process to conjure a dream-like world that is all her own. In this latest series, memories of Ashitaka playing and basking in the sunlight merge with references to famous cats from Hollywood films as well as paintings by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

My Beating Heart Sleeps, for instance, was inspired by the opening scene of the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the homeless cat Orangey who the lead character Holly, played by Audrey Hepburn, describes as ‘a poor slob with no name’. In Beager’s reimagining her own memories of Ashitaka transform the cat into not just a watchful companion, but an extension of the figure herself. A shared colour palette of warm pink and red with touches of luminescent green runs between the cat and the sleeping woman, evoking a deep, emotional connection. The creature’s translucency meanwhile gives it an other-worldly presence that we also see in Quiet Rage. In this painting, the cat is again keeping watch, perched on the neck of a supine figure whose blank gaze is unnervingly trance-like. Is she bewitched by the cat – a fearsome magical creature who bears its teeth and radiates light? Or is it a manifestation of her spirit, a guardian of the underworld?
This slippage between reality and the imagination or subconscious is characteristic of Beager’s work and connects her paintings with the Romantic tradition as well as with the Pre-Raphaelites. Growing Wings, for example, references Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s painting Beata Beatrix from c.1864–70. The painting depicts Beatrice Portinari from Dante Alighieri’s 1294 poem La Vita Nuova at the moment of her death. In Beager’s work the figure retains her saint-like status, bathed in a wide halo of light, but it is not only her that is transitioning to the afterlife: a cat lies on her lap, its head raised in a pose that mimics that of the figure. While the painting conveys a sense of serenity and stoicism, it is also a complex depiction of grief. Both the figure and cat are radiant beings, but also untouchable, already lost to the spirit world. For Beager, it illustrates the ways in which she has had to come to terms with the loss of Ashitaka (Japanese for ‘brighter tomorrow’) while also attempting to hold on to ‘his fullness’ and to honour his memory.

In A Heart’s a Heavy Burden, one of the show’s most emotive works,the cat’s presence is barely visible behind a burst of red paint in the figure’s left hand. In the other hand, she clutches a severed heart dripping blood. Here again, deep shades of red and pink are representative of both warmth and tenderness, but also violence and rage while brighter areas of yellow evoke a glimmering sense of hope that is connected with the spirit world, but also with the act of painting.

For Beager, as for many artists throughout history, making art is a form of healing and making sense. While these works make her pain visible, they also transform it by giving shape to her emotional experience and memories. This is what we encounter in the shifting forms, fervent swirl of colours, rich textures and sweeping brushstrokes: a world being made again.
Amy Beager

Amy Beager (b. 1988, England) lives and works from her studio in Chelmsford, UK. She obtained a National Diploma in Art & Design (Distinction) in 2007 and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Nottingham Trent University in 2010. Beager's painterly language has re-imagined figurative painting with her bold colour juxtapositions; figures rendered in a simultaneously classical yet modern style; and compositions, which are exquisitely romantic and poetic. Parallel to the joyous vivid colour palette and swathes of rich paint and brushwork, the figures often appear restless, fervent, and in a complex tension of ecstasy and anguish. Reminiscent of the dramatic poses of the divine saints from the Renaissance period, these figures hover between the classical and the contemporary. Beager's paintings both celebrate and explore the emotional intensity and intimacy of love.

Solo exhibitions include (Upcoming) Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Salon, West Palm Beach, Florida (2024); (Upcoming) Slow Blink, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2024); Paradise, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Berlin (2023); Enter Art Fair, solo booth, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2023); Swan Maidens, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2022); Platform (online), Unit London (2022); Dreamers, Wilder Gallery, London (2021); The Torches Burn Bright, Offshoot Arts, London (2021); Now | Futures (online), Huxley-Parlour Gallery (2021); Blue Woman, BSMT Space, London (2020).
Group exhibitions include (Upcoming) From Then to Now, Glyndebourne, East Sussex, UK (2024); EXPO Chicago, Kristin Hjellgjerde Gallery, Chicago, IL (2024); The Spirit of Adventure: the Ingram Collection, West Horsley Place, Surry, UK (2023); Eye of the Collector, with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2023); Moons, Enari Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2023); Papier, Delphian Gallery, Studio La Madeleine, Ligné, France (2023); Untitled Miami Beach, Art Fair, USA (2022); 2022 Ingram Prize Shortlists, Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, London, UK (2022); Power of Femininity, Kutlesa Gallery, Switzerland (2022); Arcadia, Curated by OffShoot Arts X A Space for Art, Home House private members club, London, UK (2022); In Momentum, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2021); A Call Across Rooms, Liliya Gallery, London (2021); Femme-Ate, Soho Revue, London (2021); The Top 100, The Department Store, London (2021); It’s All Relative, Four You Gallery X Artistellar, London (2021); Now | Futures, Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London (2021); Mnemysone, Purslane Arts, UK (2021); Works on Paper 3, Blue Shop Cottage, London (2021); Fragmented Intimacy, Grove Collective, London (2021); The Everlasting Nude, The Curators, London (2021); Antisocial Isolation, Saatchi Gallery, London (2020); 2020 Winners Exhibition, Delphian Gallery, London (2020); The Sinister Figures, BUNKER/ BuuBuu Studio, online (2020); Parallax Art Fair, Kensington Town Hall, London (2020).

Highlights and Collections

Amy Beager was awarded with the Ingram Prize 2022 and selected as a winner for the Delphain Gallery open call 2020 after she had started to exhibit her work in London in 2019. Beager's work can be found in Noewe Foundation, Lithuania; Soho House Collections; The Ingram Collection and multiple private collections globally.
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Amy Beager : Slow Blink

Amy Beager

Slow Blink

Amy Beager

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